TELENOVELA WATCH: A Look At RELACIONES PELIGROSAS; Plus, Short Takes!

A few weeks ago, promotions for the Telemundo telenovela
RELACIONES PELIGROSAS (weekdays at 10 p.m. ET) announced the telenovela was
entering a “nueva etapa,” or “new stage.”
When a network makes such an announcement, it sometimes means the story
is developing naturally into its second or third act; but far more often, new
stages are a reaction to stagnant or poor ratings. The network is telling its audience, “You
haven’t been watching the telenovela so far; well here is something new you may
like more.” This is certainly the case
with RELACIONES PELIGROSAS, which has languished far behind Telemundo’s other
telenovelas in the ratings all year.

RELACIONES PELIGROSAS, a telenovela adaptation of a popular
TV series from Spain, FÍSICA O QUÍMICA, explored the relationships among high
school students, their parents and teachers.
Initially, the telenovela was an interesting hybrid of traditional
telenovela with a clear pair of protagonists taking the central story, and a
more open American soap opera story structure featuring dozens of characters
floating in their own, fairly independent plots. The main plot line, a forbidden love story
between a new teacher just arrived from Mexico, Miranda Cruz (Sandra
Echeverría), and her student, Mauricio Blanco (Gabriel Coronel), was featured
in every episode, surrounded by side stories focusing primarily on youth issues
such as drugs, racist and homophobic bullying, child abuse, anorexia nervosa,
and illegal immigration.

Early on, the telenovela aggressively pushed the
envelope. An early fantasy sequence
featured a bizarre, almost ritualized act of students passing an ice cube
through a series of kisses, including some same-sex passes; there was copious
nudity not just focusing on the lead actress, but also her young lover as well
as a few scenes of young men in the locker room showers.

As ambitious as the telenovela was in its content and
storytelling, it was often a frustrating viewing experience. The central Miranda/Mauricio relationship had
a dreamy, telenovela romanticism of star-crossed, destined lovers, citing
Trisan and Isolde, which clashed in tone with the ripped from the headlines
tone of the students’ stories. In those
social issues stories, the dialogue too often lapsed into public service announcements
and the show was very clumsy in its attempts to tie its storylines to real-life
cases, usually set up with tin-eared lines that were variations of “I saw on
television about (insert real-life case).” As clumsy as those student issues stories
could be, they also provided some of the telenovela’s most powerful moments:
Alejandro (Kevin Aponte), a bullied gay student standing up for himself, saying
he is not going to take his own life because he is stronger than those bullying
him; Nora (Cristina Mason), discovering she and her parents are in the country
illegally and the destruction of her family after her father is deported.

For all the problems, RELACIONES PELIGROSAS was an honest
attempt at something different from Telemundo, but this has largely fallen by
the wayside with the “nueva etapa.” In
the past three weeks, RELACIONES PELIGROSAS has adopted a much more
conventional telenovela structure, consolidating its myriad of storylines into
basically three: the Miranda/Mauricio romance, the evil pharmaceutical company
testing potentially fatal drugs on high school students, and the relationship
of a pair of teachers with their exes acting as spoilers. The students not tied in some way to those
three stories have all but disappeared: Cassius (Andy Pérez), a Haitian
immigrant in a bi-racial romance with Mauricio’s sister, Sofie (Ana Carolina
Grajales), hasn’t appeared in weeks. Nora,
Alejandro and his potential love-interest, Diego (Jonathan Freudman) had a
total of three scenes over the past two weeks, all lasting a few seconds of
screen time. Even the second credited
actor, Ana Layevska as Patty, a sexphobic teacher and Miranda’s roommate and
confidante, who provided much needed comic relief in the first months of the
run (the show is seriously lacking in humor), has been reduced to a purely
supporting role for the Miranda/Mauricio story.
Her own story, a romance with an ex-con named Joaco (Christian de la
Campa), a wonderfully sweet, unlikely pairing, lacks development on the
backburner.

With the new stage, RELACIONES PELIGROSAS has lost its
audaciousness. The frank sexuality of
the early episodes is gone. The gay
kisses between Alejandro and Diego are suggested rather than shown. Characters who were once complex shades of
gray are adopting far more traditional roles as bad guys and manipulators. Ratings for the show are already poor and
have grown worse since the changes, what was at least an honorable failure is
now less than that.

SHORT TAKES

UNA FAMILIA CON
SUERTE is entering its final weeks on Univision (weekdays 7:00 p.m. ET). I must confess I mostly skipped this one as I
have a general aversion to the broad style of Mexican comedy featured in this
telenovela. I was also apprehensive
about the length, as I saw the episode count of its Mexican run climb closer
and closer to 200, I found myself less and less inclined to give it a
shot. On a whole, Televisa’s telenovelas
are becoming lengthier. From the years
2000-2001, Televisa’s telenovelas averaged 113 episodes in length; their
telenovelas from 2010-2011 averaged 154 episodes, approximately two months
longer. Even more telling, from
2000-2001, Televisa produced 11 telenovelas of 100 episodes or less; 2010 had
one (NIÑA DE MI CORAZÓN), 2011 had none, though LA FUERZA DEL DESTINO ran 101
episodes. Not that there haven’t been
excellent telenovelas over 200 episodes long, but with Televisa producing so
many remakes, I often find it difficult to maintain interest knowing the same
story has been more swiftly told before, with fewer longueurs. As entertaining as the 2010 telenovela SOY TU
DUEÑA often was, I couldn’t help but feel it noticeably dragging after seeing
the same story told in 50 less episodes in the 1995 version, LA DUEÑA.

UNA MAID EN
MANHATTAN (weekdays 8 p.m. ET on Telemundo) looks to me to be exhibiting
some telltale signs of an extension with the unreasonable separation of the
protagonists Cristobal (Eugenio Siller) and Marisa (Litzy), the sudden
introduction of a new potential love interest (Shalim Ortiz) for Marisa, and
the hastily tossed in subplot of the mysterious rich man proposing seemingly
overnight to Marisa’s co-worker Leti (Liz Gallardo). It’s ridiculous to expect an audience to take
seriously as a potential side of a romantic triangle a character introduced
this late in the story; no matter how well-written or charismatically acted,
the character can’t possibly compete with a character the audience has followed
over the previous five months. Mostly,
these contrived separations of the obvious protagonists and the heroine’s
dalliances with the Johnny-come-lately just make me annoyed and impatient
because they require the heroine to become unreasonably obstinate.

CORAZÓN APASIONADO
(weekdays, 2 p.m. ET on Univision, no English friendly options), a Venevision
International telenovela shot in Miami in 2011 that premiered on Univision
three weeks ago is fairly typical of that studio’s productions: clichéd
characters, fast-moving plots, general silliness, it is also rather fun if
you’re willing to go with the flow. It
cheered my heart this week to see lead protagonist Marlene Favela catfight in a
pool with the villainess played by Jessica Mas, a full ten years after her
brawls in GATA SALVAJE. CORAZÓN
APASIONADO is also worth noting for a bit of trivia: its cast features a number
of actors currently appearing in Telemundo productions. It’s a pretty rare occurrence for actors to
appear in simultaneous, first-run telenovelas on the rival networks. (Back in 2008, in a bit of stunt casting,
Telemundo brought Michelle Vieth into their production, LA TRAICIÓN, actually
putting her opposite herself as Univision aired AL DIABLO CON LOS GUAPOS in the
same timeslot.)

Thus far, CORAZÓN
APASIONADO features Paulo Quevedo (Victor on UNA MAID EN MANHATTAN), Kevin
Aponte (Alejandro on RELACIONES PELIGROSAS), Eduardo Ibarrola (Olivares on RELACIONES
PELIGROSAS), and Daniela Navarro (Olivia Kloster on RELACIONES
PELIGROSAS). The crediting in
telenovelas can be downright bizarre; CORAZÓN APASIONADO credits Daniela
Navarro’s appearance as her debut, which is news to anybody who saw the 2004
Venezuelan telenovela ESTRAMBÓTICA ANASTASIA, in which she had a fairly
substantial role as the sister of the male protagonist.

R.G. Morin writes a weekly column for We Love Soaps, "Telenovela Watch: A weekly look at the world of telenovelas for non-Spanish speakers." For feedback or questions, you can email R.G. Morin at argeemorin@hotmail.com.

Relaciones Peligrosos was on the right track, now I feel that they are writing just for the sake of writing. The bully stories with Cassius was real, the Haitian immigrant father was believable. I totally enjoyed Sophie and Cassius. They drop that story. JP has turned into a manipulator. The only thing that keeps me interested now is Paty and jaoco. Olivia is too smart to compromise her badge with the Mauricio obsession. The writers need to fluff it up.

I agree with most of your critique on Relaciones Peligrosas. I'm still sticking with it, but like other viewers, I was actually more attracted to the interplay of the teenage characters and their stories. In fact, the main Mauricio-Miranda storyline was probably my least favorite. It's now only tolerable because of the attractive interloper, Juan Pablo. I do, however, still find the other two 'adult' stories involving Santiago-Ana and Patty-Joaco entertaining, but am missing the teens.

But as far as ratings, I would also suggest that at least some of RP's drop can be attributed to its now two faltering lead-ins, Una Maid en Manhattan and Corazon Valiente. I see that, back in March, one can find broadcast dates where both Una Maid (8pm) and Corazon Valiente (9pm) were pulling in 1.7 million viewers. I haven't done the math, but I would guess they were usually averaging something like 1.5 and 1.6 million back then. But within the last month, they've both fallen as well, and during the week of April 16-20, Una Maid's average was only about 1.3 million and Corazon Valiente's was down to a 1.14 million average. So, I'd say the 10pm RP is obviously going to take a hit from these drops, because the "lead-in phenomenon" typically has some affect on performance.

Also, if possible, could you further expand on the ability or at least the process of how changes to a telenovela are made mid-stream. Since these shows have something of a pre-determined beginning and end (unlike American soaps), with a set broadcast schedule, exactly how much lead time or ''change time'' to adjust story mid-course do they typically have to work with? I've heard about this happening before, so am curious. Are they frantically re-writing scripts, or even re-shooting episodes? ... or do they always take a more wait-and-see type approach allowing for change-time? It would seem like with the Mauricio-Miranda story they're really trying to pad things with the emergence of this whole Mexican drug cartel.

Fisica o Quimica made an outstanding effort at pushing the envelope in many areas, and the relationship with David and Fer was (although at times painfully, annoyingly immature) quite well-developed for a soap. It's sad that Relaciones Peligrosas retreated. Maybe at some point in the future, Telemundo will realize that what's safe and boring isn't going to attack a big audience.